by Sharon Shinn
“Oh, stop complaining,” Zoe said. “You know you wouldn’t do anything else.”
The men first demanded to know the details of Corene’s adventures in Malinqua, since it turned out they had a fondness for Corene and Josetta as well as Zoe. Then they pulled out boxes and satchels and wrapped bundles and began showing Leah their wares.
They weren’t specialists in any particular kind of products, Jaker explained; they separately invested in items that appealed to them and sold their goods to customers across Welce. It was easy to see why they’d been operating successfully for years, Leah thought. Their choices were idiosyncratic but exquisite. Gloves made of gray-and-black striped fur, spices that smelled like citrus and cocoa, lengths of wool dyed in royal colors, goblets of blown glass fused to etched silver.
“What I’m thinking,” Leah said, “is that I want to set the shop up around the five elements. Each section will be full of items from all over the southern seas—but tied to that section’s element. So these”—she picked up two of the goblets—“would be in the coru section. The spices would be torz. I could divide the bolts of wool by color. Put the red and orange ones in the sweela section, maybe, and the yellow and white ones in elay.”
“Well, then, here’s something for the torz aisle,” Jaker said, and pulled the lid off a box about the size of a pillow. Inside was a tumble of rocks, all different sizes but all with the same curious composition: layers of black and white interspersed with bands of muted blue, coppery green, and thin crystallized streaks of scarlet. The colors of the elemental affiliations. Some had sharp, jagged edges as if they’d been hacked out of a mountainside; others were smooth and polished as if they’d been rescued from a river. “We found an old miner up near the Soeche-Tas border. He’d been collecting these for years while he was prospecting for precious gems. We were only going to take a few, but they were all so pretty.”
“I like these,” Leah said, dipping her hand into the pile. The polished stones were silky against her hand; the raw ones felt grainy and primal as dirt.
“And still in the torz section—” Barlow said as he opened a small leather satchel to reveal a tray of cut jewels. “These you might keep locked up, though, because they are worth something.”
“Did these come from the miner, too?” Zoe asked.
“They did. Cost way more than the rocks.”
Leah looked up with a smile. “I can see this will be a profitable association.”
• • •
The next few days passed in an enjoyable but exhausting blur of travel, negotiation, and physical labor. Leah spent a day and a half at the harbor, canvassing the ship captains and buying whatever caught her eye. She had made the trip in an elaymotive supplied by Darien and driven by a stocky young woman named Yori, who had a pleasant face and an attitude of careless confidence. Yori was strong enough to carry large boxes, patient enough to wait for hours without getting bored, and quick-witted enough to navigate the crowded harbor streets without incident. More than once during the extended buying spree Leah had been tempted to say, I wish I was you.
By noon of the second day at the harbor, they couldn’t stuff another item in the elaymotive, so Leah figured that it must be time to go home. On the trip down, she’d sat in the back of the coach like any high-born lady, but for the return journey, she joined Yori in the driver’s compartment. There was no room anywhere else—and it was more fun to talk to Yori than to stare out the window and watch the flat countryside roll past.
“So are you glad to be back in Chialto?” Yori asked as they crossed the canal into the city limits.
“I’m not sure yet,” Leah admitted. “Sometimes I think it would be easier if I was still in Malinqua.”
“If easier is what you want.”
“Isn’t it what everyone wants?”
Yori shook her head, never taking her attention from the road. They were on the Cinque now, the five-sided boulevard that made a complete loop around Chialto, and traffic was almost as bad as it had been at the harbor. “What I want is to feel. I know that means sometimes I’ll feel bad. I can’t stand the idea that I might just drift through my own life. At the end of it, I want to look back and be a little impressed.”
“You’re sweela,” Leah said almost accusingly. “The past two days I’ve thought you must be torz or hunti, because you’re so patient. You tricked me!”
“I am. Sweela with three elay blessings. I try not to tell anybody.”
“I would think not!” Leah exclaimed, and they both laughed
It took nearly an hour to unload the elaymotive at the shop, and by then it was almost dark. Yori offered to drive Leah back to her lodgings, but Leah wanted to walk. “Too many days cooped up in dining halls and smoker cars,” Leah said. “I need to clear my head.”
This early in Quinnasweela, the night air was cool enough to make a brisk walk welcome. Leah detoured through the Plaza of Women to pick up dinner from a food vendor since she couldn’t remember if she’d left anything edible in her rooms. The instant she stepped inside the kierten and turned up the gaslight, the reifarjin fixed her with its unblinking stare, managing to convey its sense of deep betrayal.
“I know, I know. I wasn’t here to feed you this morning, and I’m so sorry!” Leah said. She unwrapped her sandwich and pulled out shreds of meat to drop into the bowl. The fish devoured them almost before they hit the water. She stopped feeding it when almost a third of the food was gone. “Do you ever get full? You’re the oddest creature.”
She moved slowly through the room, kicking off her shoes, pouring a glass of water, settling into an old chair with a sigh of contentment. She was almost as hungry as the reifarjin, and she ate the rest of the meal in about ten minutes.
“Maybe I should go back out and get us some more food,” she said to the fish. It frilled its fins as if in reply; she took that as an affirmative. “Well—”
A sharp rap on the door made her sit up straighter and wish she hadn’t discarded her overtunic and shoes. “I imagine that will be a messenger from Darien, wanting me to come up to the palace and report,” she said on a sigh, pushing herself to her feet. “Maybe I can put him off until tomorrow.”
But it wasn’t Darien or Yori or one of the regent’s guards or the landlord or any of the few other people who knew she was in the city.
It was Rhan Ardelay.
• • •
Leah stared at Rhan for what seemed like a full minute. He stared back just as intently. She had not forgotten a single detail of his face—handsome, roguish, always on the verge of laughter. He’d managed to tame his dark red hair, but it still retained an irrepressible curl. He was dressed in a fashionably dark tunic and trousers, well-cut and expensive. He looked like he was on his way to attend a fancy dinner or to break some young girl’s heart.
“Rhan,” she said, her tone absolutely blank.
“So you do remember me.” When that caused her face to go just as blank, he added, “I thought you might not. Since you have pretended for the past five and a half years that I did not exist.”
“Maybe it wasn’t pretending so much as wishful thinking,” she shot back.
“I have a lot of ex-lovers—”
“I’m sure you do.”
“But you’re the only one who has wished me dead.”
“Are you sure? Have you asked them all?”
He laughed. He actually laughed. Then he slipped past her to stroll into the room, looking around critically. “Well, all right, maybe one or two of the other ones wouldn’t mind if I suffered a little,” he said. “This is where you’re living now? It’s awfully stark.”
“I don’t want you here. Get out. Who told you where I was living? Who told you I was even in Welce?”
“My father. Since apparently you sailed back from Malinqua with him.”
Leah felt a strong surge of irritation with the swee
la prime. “I knew I should have made him promise not to tell you anything.”
Rhan shrugged. “I would have found out sooner or later.”
“So why are you here right now?” she asked.
He was still surveying the apartment, doing one slow pivot to take in the entire space. “I couldn’t stand living here,” he said. “It’s depressing.”
“And I was going to ask you to move in,” she marveled. “Now I can save myself the trouble.”
He laughed again. “It doesn’t suit you,” he said.
“I rather think you no longer know what suits me and what doesn’t. If you ever did.”
“I know what you like,” he countered. “And this isn’t it.”
Leah shrugged. It had been a long time since what she liked had had much bearing on what she did, where she lived, or how she moved through the days. “Why are you here, Rhan?” she asked again, a little more wearily. “What do you want from me?”
“A friendly conversation?” he said. “Would that even be possible?”
No, she wanted to say. I don’t feel friendly toward you. I don’t love you anymore, I don’t hate you, but you’ll always be the man who broke my heart. If I’ve pretended you don’t exist it’s because that’s easier than remembering that you do. She recalled Yori saying she didn’t want life to be easy; she wanted it to be full of experiences that made her feel. Well, I’m not Yori. And Rhan makes me feel too much.
“Conversation about what?”
“Come on, Leah,” he said in a wheedling voice. “Put on your shoes. Put on your tunic. Let’s go somewhere and talk. You can’t avoid me forever. Let’s get all the nasty things said now and then move on.”
“Just saying the nasty things out loud won’t make them go away.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it’s a start.”
• • •
In the end, she went with him because she didn’t know what else to do. If she refused to talk to him, shoved him out the door, she would still be thrumming with the shock of his presence; talking to him could hardly make things worse. But she wouldn’t let him take her to some quiet, romantic restaurant with soft lighting and expensive wines. She insisted on loud, brightly lit, and public, “so no one will look twice if I throw my water in your face.” They ended up at an outdoor café near the Plaza of Women where the food was greasy and cheap. Braziers ringed the metal tables set out under a canopied patio, supplying almost enough heat. Tubes of gaslight hissed under the awning, sending down a garish illumination. Three other couples sat at nearby tables. All of them appeared to be arguing.
Perfect.
Rhan asked for a liqueur that made the waitress stare at him uncomprehendingly, so Leah ordered wine for both of them. “You won’t like it, it’s too sweet, but it’s the best they’ve got,” she told him. “So don’t complain.”
“Your sojourn in— Where was it? Malinqua?—has blunted your sensibilities, I see,” Rhan said. “What exactly did Darien have you doing? Running ghetto taverns and smuggling illegal goods?”
“Consorting with the people who did,” she said.
His eyes widened. “I was joking.”
“I wasn’t.”
“But weren’t you—afraid? Disgusted? Offended? Depressed? You’re a daughter of the Five Families and you were living in squalor—”
“First, I wasn’t actually living in the slums and I mostly kept to the respectable establishments, though I learned my way around the riskier districts quickly enough. And second—” She considered him a moment. How she remembered those first giddy ninedays when Rhan was courting her. This laughing, handsome, charming scoundrel who luxuriated in hedonism. He was a connoisseur of the exquisite, a devotee of the extravagant. Of course she had wanted him to believe she shared his tastes.
“And second,” she went on, “I never cared about material things as much as you did. Until I moved in with Taro and Virrie, I didn’t have any idea what the lives of the Five Families were like. You always forget that.”
“I barely knew it,” he retorted. “Since you didn’t tell me about your life before I met you.”
“I wanted you to think I was good enough for you.”
“But as Taro’s niece—”
“My father was an actor. We stayed in grubby hotels and left sometimes without paying the bill. The best clothes I owned were the costumes we saved for the historical dramas. I was happy when someone remembered to give me dinner at all—I didn’t care that it wasn’t from the finest restaurant in town. Maybe Taro’s niece deserved to dine at the palace and live like royalty, but I was sixteen before I knew what it was like to be a daughter of the Five Families. Of course I didn’t want you to know any of that back then! But that’s why none of this bothers me now.”
Whatever reply he might have made was cut off by the serving girl returning with a carafe of wine and two glasses that were none too clean. Leah poured for both of them and watched in appreciation as Rhan took his first sip. He didn’t quite gag and spit it out, but he swallowed hurriedly and then gazed at the glass as if it might be filled with poison. In Malinqua, it would be, Leah thought a little wistfully.
“Any life that led you to consider this wine worth drinking is a sadder existence than I ever want to contemplate,” Rhan said.
“Good. I’ll have it all.”
“And I figured it out eventually, you know,” he went on. “I knew you hadn’t been brought up with finery and wealth. But my own life was something of a charade just then, too. My father—even though he was the sweela prime—had been ostracized because his brother Navarr had offended King Vernon, and the whole Ardelay family suffered for it. I seemed to be in desperate pursuit of luxury, but I was just trying to compensate for my unfortunate situation. I, too, was trying to prove to everyone in Chialto that I was good enough to sit at the table.”
“It’s not even comparable.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But I was never quite as shallow as you seem to want to think.”
She shrugged. It didn’t matter. An overindulged dilettante, an anxious pretender trying to fit in—he could be either of these things or something else entirely, but it didn’t matter. He held a place in her memory that was charred and deep in ashes, and how he made her feel was more important than who he actually was.
The serving girl was back, asking if they wanted to get food. Rhan looked horrified at the thought, but Leah ordered another sandwich. This time she wasn’t sharing it with any stupid fish.
“Do you really think anything they serve here is safe to eat?” he asked once the girl had departed.
Leah sipped from her glass and wondered how much wine she’d have to put away to blunt the sharp edges of this evening. More than she was willing to drink, she decided. “I’ve been here twice in the past few days and survived both times,” she said. “I think I’m safe enough.”
“So what’s your plan?” he asked. “Now that you’re back in Welce? Do you have a plan?”
Apparently he was moving past recriminations and straight to informational exchanges. Just as well. Otherwise the recriminations could go on forever. “I want to bring Mally into my life,” she said.
Rhan raised his red eyebrows. “Tell her who she is? Who you are?”
“Eventually. I hope. Once she’s gotten to know me. Darien has arranged for Virrie and Mally to live in town for the quintile, and I’ll hope to see her often. I don’t know how long it will take to gain her trust and affection, but I’ll try. And then—then we’ll see.”
“Do you plan to tell her about me?”
She eyed him a moment. “I don’t know. Do you want me to?”
For a moment, Rhan looked vulnerable and uncertain. It was an expression that sat oddly on his laughing face. “I don’t know. But—like you—my mother is determined to find a place in Mally’s life, and you can hardly tell a child who her
grandmother is without mentioning her father as well.”
Leah shrugged. “In Welce, it seems to be easy enough to conceal the parentage of high-born children. King Vernon managed it for years. I think we could get your mother involved in Mally’s life without giving away any secrets. So you may step forward or stay in the shadows, whichever you choose.”
He was silent a moment while the waitress brought a plate holding a hearty sandwich that smelled absolutely delicious. Leah took her first bite and swallowed it while Rhan was still thinking.
“I do want to apologize,” he said at last, “for behaving so badly when you told me—when you first found out—it just had not occurred to me that you would get pregnant.”
Leah swigged some more wine. The more she drank, the less she minded how bad it was. “It hadn’t occurred to me, either,” she said. “Which was obviously stupid.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “And I didn’t want to tell my father, since I was sure he’d be furious.”
“As if Ardelays haven’t been siring bastards across the Welchin countryside since the dawn of time.”
He gave her a reproachful look, but could hardly deny it. The Ardelays were famous for their indiscretions. “I talked to Kurtis, to see if he had any advice. He already had his own children by then, of course, and he was full of the glories of parenthood.” Glancing into the past had clearly unsettled Rhan enough that he needed the calming effects of alcohol. He took another sip of the sweet wine, grimaced, and polished off the glass.
“So I thought, all right, I can find some way to make this work, I don’t know how, but Leah and I can discuss it. But you were gone.” He poured himself another glass. “Vanished.” He gulped that down, too. “No one knew where you were.”
“I’d gone to Taro’s to wait out the last ninedays of my pregnancy.”
“It was half a quintile before I was able to worm that information out of anybody.”
Leah didn’t bother to hide her incredulity, and Rhan correctly read her expression.
